Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

Starring the much-missed James Dean, Rebel without a Cause was one of the events that lead to 'Teenagers' - not just as young adults, but as a power all of their own. Alongside Brando in The Wild One, and Elvis Presley in music, James Dean here portrayed the fears and angst so prevalent in the years to come; the only thing that was missing was Dean himself, killed in a car crash a month before the film was released.

Jim Stark moves to a new town with his father and domineering mother. In one day, he falls in love with Judy and clashes with the local gang leader. Taking young loner Plato with them, the three hide out in a large house and play at happy families until the police arrive... In a film full of stars, with many messages hidden in the 50s but more obvious now, it is perhaps appropriate to quote a sadly missed favourite critic, Robert Ebert - "Like its hero, Rebel Without a Cause desperately wants to say something and doesn't know what it is. If it did know, it would lose its fascination. More perhaps than it realized, it is a subversive document of its time".